Simplivity hires ex-Ruckus boss as first Australian country manager

Hyperconverged infrastructure vendor Simplivity has hired former Ruckus Wireless boss Patrick Devlin to oversee Australia and New Zealand.

The Australian market was previously overseen by Simplivity vice president APJ Scott Morris, based in Singapore. As ANZ regional sales director, Devlin will report directly to Morris while based in Simplivity's Sydney office.

Prior to joining Simplivity, Devlin was managing director of Ruckus Wireless Australia. He joined in the vendor in 2014, but left last month following the announced merger with Brocade.

He brings 20 years' experience to the role, including stints as country manager of WatchGuard, regional sales manager of Brocade, company director of DataOps and various roles at HDS, HP and Dell.

The appointment follows a number of hires revealed earlier this year, when Simplivity landed talent from EMC and VMware.

Devlin told CRN the biggest challenge in his new role would be educating partners on the relatively new market segment.

"People talk about convergence in the same sentence as hyperconvergence. Most of the work we do when having conversations with partners is saying what it is that we do, and the full stack of change that we can bring," said Devlin.

"I bring the most value coming from an enthusiastic tech background and bringing new technology to the market. It makes sense to do something new in a growth sector.

Morris told CRN the newly created role reflected Simplivity's growth in region, and to further support its Australian partners.

"Simplivity's network of partners has been integral to the company's strong growth since launching in 2014. Patrick's long history of working with the channel in ANZ, and with Simplivity's key alliance partners including Cisco and Dell, represents a significant strengthening of our capabilities in the ANZ market," said Morris.

Since launching in Australia, Simplivity has already signed big-name resellers such as Data#3, Dimension Data and Logicalis.

An early partner was Brisbane-based Serenity IT, which has been deploying Simplivity to a number of schools across Australia, including St Andrews Anglican College, Somerset College and Kimberley College.